Cut the cost of car repairs

[Garages4You]

Dear Conor,

Thank you for your post and it is an excellent point and example that you raise.

It is great you have experience as a mechanic. We have a number of independent ex mechanics who advice and work for us on the service so your feedback in particular is really valuable to me.

To answer your question Conor I would say it is binding. Please allow me to explain. Our goal along with all our centres is to ensure each customer gets the best deal available and receives excellent service.

We speak to all our customers and monitor the bills and charges to ensure everything matches up. We have had occasions where the work has taken longer than originally quoted as you mentioned and the centre has charged the original price. This is because I and all our service providers want each Garages4You customer leaving that garage feeling they got the best service possible. We would both rather honour the price because that way you will use the service and centre again. This is one of the reasons you would use our service because if you have any issues on the day like this you can come to us to help sort it out.

I hope this answers your question and if you have any other points or questions I would be more than happy to answer them.

Kind Regards,

Greg Allison

Garages4You.com Managing Director

[sjpsam]

at the risk of getting shot down in flames again!!!!

In WARWICK, I got a flyer on my windscreen after a garage that is peugeot and citroen specialists giving a 10% discount to new customers, as it was under new management, on repairs, mot's, servicing etc. I took my 06 plate 206sw to them as my service was due and save £££'s with them compaired to my local peugeot dealership.

I asked if it effected my warranty etc, and was told no as they only used genuine parts etc, so it has not effect on your warranty at all.

The service I received was second to none and they even delivered my car back to me, warwick is about a 30/40 min journey for me, but was well worth the extra 10 mins further for a friendly service and excellent work to my car!!

I would have no hesitation for taking my car there to them again.

To anyone the voucher code from the flyer was VTSMP1 it gave 10% off. I think they will still honour it but not 100% sure.

They do have a website www.citroenservice.co.uk

Hope this helps someone,

[2cats]

Not much good if you live south of Leicester or in Bristol... absolutely useless in the South East

[Spikey]

wow.... steep prices.... anyone know of any reasonable gearbox specialist in West Yorkshire.

[deltic]

I would want to know:

Are they good garages who have been verified against stringent industry standards and recognised consumer bodies ? or..

Are they garages that pay to be listed or agree to pay a commission or similar for each sale (which is how these things tend to work in the motor business)

i.e. is the motivation to provide you the best and cheapest or earn the website the most ?

[JDPower]

Originally Posted by hethmar

Hey, that Good Garage Scheme Maniac gives a link to above seems much better! In fact I just went on there and I live in a tiny Norfolk town but yep, my favourite garage is listed with 4 customers giving a 5 star review.

Originally Posted by scoobies

As far as I can see all garages with any revoiews all have 5 stars - am I missing something.

Same here, every garage I looked at local to me had 5 stars for everything. Not very reliable methinks :rolleyes:

[Garages4You]

Dear Moneysavers,

Again I just wanted to take the time to reply to some of the questions raised.

I thought ‘Deltic’ raised some good points and I am keen to provide some feedback on them. Firstly addressing the question of are the garages on the site verified against industry standards. The answer to this is yes. Many of our centres are members of bodies but we do also have some that are not members of any trade bodies and I am pleased to say they are doing just as good a job as the ones that are. To put you in the picture, industry standard bodies charge garages expensive annual fees to be part of them. So for example a small independent garage with a limited marketing budget but delivering quality service can’t afford to join! This doesn’t mean they are not providing a good service just they can’t afford to pay the large upfront fees required for membership. Is that fair on these centres or the consumer?

We do things very differently by braking down any expensive barriers and allowing all garages big or small to compete on a level playing field only being judged by their deals and quality of work. Explaining this will hopefully answer Deltic’s second point regarding paying to be on the site. Obviously we are business and have to pay the salaries somehow but I am very open and honest about that and how we make our money which you will find explained here: www.garages4you.com/aboutus.html

As covered on the website our centres all pay the same fee and only pay us when they actually get a customer. The fee they pay is not linked in anyway to your price so we don’t make more money if it’s more expensive therefore it encourages the garages to offer you unique discounts through our site. By only paying when they actually receive business they don’t need lots of money to work with us so if they are an excellent small independent garage they can still receive bookings through our service.

We are not a directory and it is a service we offer customers by firstly sourcing your quote, locating your centre, making your booking, tracking the job and contacting you after the work is complete. We are there with you every step of the process and I have no interest in providing you with inferior centres as this would not make our customers happy. However in the event that something did not quite go to plan, just give us a call and we will do our best to help resolve it for you.

I really hope this has answered your questions. If anyone has any other points or comments I would be happy to answer them.

Kind Regards,

Greg Allison

Managing Director Garages4You.com

[laulipop]

Well, since this went out in the e-mail this week I'm probably one of the first customers to have used the site and got my car serviced already.

Having a good condition 10 year old Honda I want to find a place that does a good job but obviously keeps the cost down. I did a search on my car type in my town and the first and most highly rated garage happened to be only 10 mins walk from my flat (stroke of luck, I know). Having originally requested a Saturday (which I couldn't get) I ended up with the MD Greg calling me back and helping arrange a suitable time, which was this afternoon.

The price quoted was what I paid, it was a proper wee old fasioned garage with two nice guys in it, they explained a few wee bits that they'd done which are often beyond the norm and I would absolutely use them and the garages4u site again (assuming my car starts tomorrow OK ).

Last time I got my car serviced it was a friend of a friend of my Dad and it was in my home town 20 miles away (and was the same price) - had I done that again it would have been a lot of hassle. This way there are personal recommendations and a third party that has a vested interest in not keeping the details of crap garages on their books, so you have further peace of mind that you're not going to get ripped off or shoddy work.

All in all, a handy wee site as far as I'm concerned.

[deltic]

Thank you Greg for an honest description of your business - credit to you for that.

From a 'money saving' point of view, I have to say that Garages4You do not appear to guarantee better prices or quality of service, rather they provide a service introducing customers to fee-paying partners whilst also providing various broker services e.g booking. So, I'm not sure that they should be promoted on the website ahead of any other garage business or broker as it appears to be just advertising to me as opposed to true money-saving. I don't think I'd be allowed to advertise something here in that way.

[Garages4You]

Dear MoneySavers,

I am delighted to see Laulipop had a good experience using our service. Our team works really hard to bring you the complete peace of mind service from sourcing your initial quotes to having the actual work done and I am really happy to earn another satisfied customer.

Thanks for your thoughts Deltic and I respect your opinion. I do however believe we genuinely offer motorists a real money saving service. Instead of backing this up with just my opinion please allow me to use facts and figures from the service itself.

Obviously we don’t cover all of the UK yet but let’s take Edinburgh, Scotland where the service was initially launched as an example. MOT test prices are currently set by VOSA at a maximum of £50.35 (a little insider heads up for you all out there - this is due to go up again this year about summer time! So keep an eye out.) Most garages charge the full price of £50.35 to customers but we can source your MOT for as low as £32.50 in Edinburgh. For the month of January 08 all our cars placed at this centre passed first time without any additional work required so the service has saved those customers £17.85. That is better in your pocket and without our service these customers would not have got access to these savings.

We are constantly sourcing you the best deals available and the more motorists that use our service the better deals we can secure for you. For example due to the volume of customers going through our service in Edinburgh we have now sourced a new centre that is going to do the MOT for our customers at £29.95 which is £20.40 off the test price.

I hope this shows all the MoneySavers that our service does offer real genuine savings to our customers.

Kind Regards,

Greg Allison

Managing Director Garages4You.com

[deltic]

Thanks again Greg.

If you opened up the newspaper or any other media you will nearly always find offers on items such as service and MOT e.g. service and MOT for £99. So I'm not sure you are offering anything different or additional.

You may also have to watch out for VOSA - they do not like the MOT being used as a marketing tool as they beleive discounting may undermine the quality or integrity of the work being done e.g. low price equals high chance of work being required to cover cost. I'm not suggesting for a second that you do this, just pointing out the VOSA viewpoint, right or wrong. That is also why the majority of centres charge the published rate.

[coco279]

i used this site to get my picasso serviced and have my timming belt replaced,the service from greg was 2nd to none he calls you when he says he will and he does all the arrangments with the garage for you,the service at the garage was also excellant and they did all the work for the prices quoted,very freindly and would recommend to anyone.

Chris

[kay8]

Sorry guys, their website does look great (or did, maybe they've done a runner) but these guys just aren't as good as they make out to be.

Looking at their website I thought this was a fantastic idea and decided to get my car put through the MOT using them. What a mistake!

Not only did I get ripped off at the garage I had my car tested in but when I tried to sort it out with garages 4 you they were rude, unhelpful and just frankfully not very pleasant people to deal with.

I've been driving for a while so have done the mot saga for many years now and during that time I've dealt with my fair share of conmen and tricksters. You need to be careful who you deal with these days, there's plenty of scam merchants out there.

The concept is great but I would not hand over you credit card details to this company. Do some research and find a reputable local company yourself!